I made a coffee this morning—no, really?!—and I realised something that’s so painfully obvious that I’m willing to endure the accusation that this was “AI” generated on account of the em dashes. I’m tired of always using brackets, damn it!

I have a refined process the mornings for making my balcony coffee, which involves grinding the beans to a specific size, boiling water, measuring both out down to the gram, steeping for a certain time, and drawing down. The delightful James Hoffman has been instrumental in improving my game here.

There are three key ways his advice has improved how I make coffee. First, is something that precedes the second. The taste has also been elevated. And lastly, it’s the consistency of brews that has seen the biggest improvement. It’s taken a lot of the guesswork and “eyeballing it” that I used to do, and given me a process whereby I can make something delicious in the morning to wake up to, even if I slept badly the night before. Not to toot my own horn, but our pour-overs are now either just as good, or maybe even slightly better, than some of the “batch brews” I have at local coffee shops.

Anyway, turns out, those recipes, ratios, and knowledge are also applicable for the cheaper stuff, not just lightly-roasted single origin Colombian beans of joy. Shocking, am I right!?

I have a few bags of Japanese UCC coffee that I get from one of the many Asian grocery stores in Chatswood and Rhodes, which are… okay, but are nostalgic in a specific way that makes me happy. And I’m not even drinking it on ANA! To make it this time, I:

Measured there was 10 g of ground coffee in one of the bags 1.

I calculated about 160 g of water to maintain the same ratio as what I use for my Clever Coffee Dripper and V60, and poured it in. This was instead of, again, eye-balling it or guessing how much I’d need. 1.

I also took the water off the boil slightly earlier, because the rule of thumb is to brew darker-roasted coffee less hot. We have a kettle with a temperature dial on our wish list, partly also so we can brew different teas at the right temperatures.

Just doing these three things made this basic, imported, darkly roasted UCC coffee taste significantly better than what I’d been able to make before. Again, it’s almost as though controlling and optimising variables makes a difference.

My Omake page has an expandable section under Coffee for Recipes if you’re interested.